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TSG 161 AAR

Welcome to the TSG161 After Action Report thread. In this thread you can post the results of your game. Please state victory date and score (preferably in the post title), as recorded in the Hall of Fame, and the most important: your path to glory!STOP - Please do not continue reading this thread until you have completed and submitted your game.
Please use the Civ5 game submission page to submit your final, first play through, .Civ5Save file, saved AFTER the victory ceremony if you were not conquered (using the "Lemme play one more turn" feature.).
- How useful was your UA?
- Did you use spying to your advantage?
- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Which Ideology did you choose?
- What techs did you prioritize ?

Can't upload the save file yet. I'll do that later. Diplomatic victory in about 311 turns. I won on the first vote, but it took forever for the first world leader vote to trigger after I hit the Information era. I wonder if the secret to a faster victory was to kill all the other civs except one in the Industrial era so the UN would form in the Atomic era instead of Information? But with "complete kills" that could be difficult. I think I could have started clearing the map with galleasses and finished with highly-promoted frigates, a bunch of destroyers, and maybe a couple of Panzers if I needed to fight any land battles.

- How useful was your UA?
- Did you use spying to your advantage?
- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Which Ideology did you choose?
- What techs did you prioritize ?

Click to expand...

I used a spy on defense mostly because I was the tech leader. I put my extra spies in CS's for influence, but that really wasn't necessary. I had enough world leader votes at the end (Forbidden Palace, world ideology, and world religion) that I didn't need to use diplomats for a few extra votes, but I think I did have some diplomats just the same.

Map helped. The AI's were totally passive, like they didn't know how to fight on a water map; they didn't even war with each other.

I thought I was playing at Deity level so I was very cautious at first, until I figured that out. Might have cost me a few turns, I don't know. It didn't take all that long to figure it out.

Tradition, Patronage, Rationalism(3), Freedom, Exploration, finished Rationalism. My most important policies were Arsenal of Democracy and Treaty Organization. I built a ton of galleasses when they were the cheapest unit I could make, and saved most of them to gift to CS's for 20 influence each. The techs that I prioritized were Banking and Telecom.

Diplomatic win is actually the most punishing to screw up. Miss the timing and it's like 30 turns slower for next vote so you have to get it first time or MIGHT AS WELL QUIT lol.

Settled in place. Since it's archipelago, I just went worker>monument.
Tech: mining, pottery, sailing, optics.

What I did in the early game was to settle 3 cities then I built triremes.
As it turns out, it takes 2 triremes to tribute a CS on prince lol what.

So I just kept a crew of triremes around to tribute CS the entire game.

Now the way to win this fast that I did was as follows:
Step1: Find everyone, research printing press, found congress, vote for world religion me.
Step2: Build forbidden palace, bribe everyone with diplomats to vote for my world religion
Step3: Rush ideology, propose world ideology second vote
Step4: Kill all but 2 AIs before entering atomic era.
Step5: Bulb into Atomic era one turn before the world ideology vote. This
triggered the world leader vote as the first thing to vote on. This means you have to get from atomic era to Globalization in 10 turns to win.
Step6: Bulb my way to globalization and buy remaining CS. Getting the CS was trivial actually, had so much gold. Patronage is all but useless except to get the Palace.

That was 36 votes total out of 35 needed ( since I had 2 diplomats ).
I had just enough faith to buy 2 great scientists thanks to my genius plan of
taking the +50 faith per great people thing. Otherwise I would have
missed having globalization for the first world leader vote and it'd be
like 30 turns wasted.

I think this is one of the coolest games I've played. Tributing is a hilarious loophole
in low difficulty games. I got like 3-4k from tributes.

Religion was tithe+growth+production as always. I didn't spread it to the AI so they
wouldn't get more votes. I just made borobudur in my cap to spread it to myself and some
city-states. I also generated a prophet at some point, I shouldn't have let it get to that
probably. Whoops. It made it closer than it should have.

First, after two games, I must say that I like complete kills option for anything not Domination victory. It almost forces us to play Culture and Diplomacy closer to what it should be rather than being a mutated domination game (eliminate high culture opponent, get the WC through atomic era).

Notes:
No razing and no complete kills mean that going to information era is mandatory.
It's been a long time I haven't played a diplomacy game this way though so I'm not entirely sure about the timings.

Map is Archipelago so getting Trireme fast is mandatory.
The good news is that on Prince asking tributes and bullying the AI for gold is really easy:
Also stole a worker from Quebec.

The initial warrior reveals a very small starting island when it comes to expansions.
I see one spot in the south for a city and that's it. This means we have to get optics fast and discover overseas spots (a likely one is near the marble in the east).
Making 2 triremes slows me down substantially at first so I decide to go 3City NC. We'll see if Trireme is able to find a great 4th spot.

So now it is the tricky part of Diplo victory. Basically the dice roll of when you discover PP to trigger the vote. Thats probably why I usually skip diplomacy victory GotM but we will see how it goes.
I also will need 35 delegates. City states are 24, leader at the last era is 6, FP is 2 so I need 3 more. Considering I plan to go to the last era and that I will have at least 10 turns to get globalization I think it will be not an issue.

Finishing PP at T134 (T135 council) gives us around 30+25+5 turns of 2 votes and voting turns. This means to reach info era around T195 which is not that difficult. We dont even ned globalization at T195 but just to reach Telecomunications, we will then have 10 turns for Globalization.

I didnt even need to finish Rationalism and no scientists from faith. But since everything was decided by my PP timing this doesnt matter. This means that a faster (or delayed) PP can easily lead to a sub 200 victory on this map. If I have time Ill replay after education to get a slower printing press around T160 or around T120 and see if I can get to info era before the first or second vote respectively.

Acken I see your finish time is faster than mine anyway even without eliminating the extra AI.
So yeah I guess on low difficulty it's barely worth doing anyway?

I think I wiped them out with almost zero effort. Like you I had a bunch of triremes already and then basically made 3 frigates and that was enough to take over the entire map.

Do you think it'd be faster if you wiped the AI out in your 4 city game or is it really kind of a waste of time since there's not that many techs to get from atomic to info era anyway?

Click to expand...

Well it's probably faster to reach atomic era than info but not by a long stretch. The thing is that all is decided by when you get PP (or meet last AI). So if your window is 60turns to get the last vote before WC vote it doesn't matter if it takes you 50 turns with atomic or 59 with information era. The only goal is to reach it before the timer.

Optimally Atomic is probably the best but requires a very precise PP timing which is very difficult to judge before hand. Think about the timer as either a 60turns window in 2 votes or 33turns in 1 vote (1-2 turns more or less, would need more precise calculations to know exactly). So if you can consistently reach Information era before T200, it means that it will always be at least as good as the atomic strategy if you get PP at T140.

If I read you correctly you got Vote 2 around T205 so I assume your printing press was slower than mine around T140-145 ? The only way for that to beat me is if you can reach atomic in 1 vote so around T173-178. That's hard.

The way you have to think about it is in reverse. What timing can I achieve to reach info era or atomic. If the atomic strategy is say 10turns faster it means that if I can reliably reach Info era at T195, the atomic era strategy should be able to reach it T185. So from there you deduce that you have to get Printing Press at T125 for it to work in 2 votes or T152 in 1 vote.

The other thing to remember here is the complete kill option which while it worked for you can be an issue when time is very short.

I could have reached atomic much faster, in just one vote, but the problem is that I wouldn't have had enough votes since I killed all but 2 AI.
I had 36 votes out of 35, +2 from religion, +2 from palace, +2 from ideology, +2 from diplomats.
With just 1 vote I'd only have 34 right?

So ultimately in this case it's probably better to rush PP and rush info era with just 1 vote? Maybe that's always the case? I don't know how vote count works exactly but it seems that if you reach globalization is gives you enough bonus votes that you don't need to pass world ideology or even world religion? I dunno.

I'm just trying to figure out the optimal fastest win time possible here ( if I replayed over and over ).

I could have reached atomic much faster, in just one vote, but the problem is that I wouldn't have had enough votes since I killed all but 2 AI.
I had 36 votes out of 35, +2 from religion, +2 from palace, +2 from ideology, +2 from diplomats.
With just 1 vote I'd only have 34 right?

So ultimately in this case it's probably better to rush PP and rush info era with just 1 vote? Maybe that's always the case? I don't know how vote count works exactly but it seems that if you reach globalization is gives you enough bonus votes that you don't need to pass world ideology or even world religion? I dunno.

I'm just trying to figure out the optimal fastest win time possible here ( if I replayed over and over ).

Click to expand...

Globalization garantees you quite a lot of extra deleguates. I'm pretty sure on standard size you can win with just 4 extras but for small size like this you need 5. So that's 4 bonus (FP + first vote) + 1 diplomat. But that means you have to reach globalization before the world leader vote which can be difficult or get 2 bonus votes like religion and ideology.

Rushing PP and getting info era in 1 vote is not possible. Either you delay and go for 1 vote or you rush and go for 2 vote. Like I said either you want a 35 turns window or a 60 turn window with the goal being making it almost exactly that. If you reach the goal in 45 turns of your 60 turn window it is bad. You just lost 15 turns. You should have tried instead to delay PP 10 turns and go for the 35 turns window.

How the HECK do you guys get through the techs that quick? Looking at @poxpower and @Acken maps... a big difference has to be my population, right? At T100 I had 23, at T150 40, and at T200 48. (I had checked "Avoid Growth" at 129 due to BadHappy, and forgot to turn it back on until PubSchools, T226.) But would just the pop make that much of a difference?

Another question; the first vote was T279, and I had only 32 votes (4 + Leader 2 + C/S 24 + FP 2). But I had voted my religion "World Religion" on T254. Why didn't I get 2 votes for that? And then, second vote was T294, and I still only had 32 votes. Shouldn't I have had 2 more for winning the first vote? And I still didn't have the 2 from religion.

Your vote count might be wrong like maybe you have diplomats in the wrong city or set as spies or your resolution didn't actually pass or been repealed somehow. Maybe you also didn't notice that you lost some city-states the turn of the vote ( this is kind of a dumb thing for diplo because the AI plays after you but right before the vote so in theory they could always stop you if they weren't stupid but sometimes they randomly buy your CS and it loses you votes ).

Yes pop makes a monster difference obviously. Acken probably had double your pop by the end. That's so much more science and hammers for your empire. Probably though there's many other ways in which you played suboptimally which also contributed but...yeah.. losing 100 turns of growth is like ridiculously bad, it's almost like throwing the game.

this is my first GOTM and I didn't take very good notes. I was a wonder producing machine in the capital city, which led to a lot of culture, many social policies and a tech lead throughout the game. Maxed out trade cargo ships with wonder and social policies and was creating GPT over 375. This allowed me to easily influence all the City states throughout the game. I had never achieved a Diplomatic victory before so likely it took me longer. Didn't win until I acquired the extra two votes for finishing first or second. I used the spies as diplomats but I don't think it made a difference.

Attached Files:

this is my first GOTM and I didn't take very good notes. I was a wonder producing machine in the capital city, which led to a lot of culture, many social policies and a tech lead throughout the game. Maxed out trade cargo ships with wonder and social policies and was creating GPT over 375. This allowed me to easily influence all the City states throughout the game. I had never achieved a Diplomatic victory before so likely it took me longer. Didn't win until I acquired the extra two votes for finishing first or second. I used the spies as diplomats but I don't think it made a difference.

- How useful was your UA?
Very usefull for make money, and buy influence of the CS's

- Did you use spying to your advantage?
Yes, to make a coup in CS allied with other Civ, and get influence with other ones

- Did the map help or hinder victory and how?
It was helpfull to make Sea Routes, improving the economy ...

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
Piece of Cake - I only started making relevant military units in the Information Era.

- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Which Ideology did you choose?Liberty for the Settler Bonus;
Piety, for the Reformation, and use Faith to purchase GreatPersons (with +100 Faith per turn, at the end of the game, getting a lot of them);Rationalism, for improve Specialists;Exploration, to make more money in the SeaRoutes and more production in coastal cities, andPatronage at last, due the Diplomatic Victory focus.Freedom was the choosed Ideology, focused on GreatPersons, Culture and Specialists

- What techs did you prioritize?
With focus on the upper part of the TechTree, going by Writing, Theology, Architecture, Radio, Telecommunication and Globalization - but getting some bottom Techs because the Wonders - Was built 37 Great and Small Wonders, in Berlin.

I've catched four workers from CS, let them angry for much time...
But the game is not involved in any war - just giving military units for CS defend the other Civs's aggression.

I had 35/35 delegates, won on first vote. In addition to city states I had the world idology, bonus from being host and three diplomats.

I've been wanting to do a GotM since Civ 2, but those guys in the Civ 2 GotM do some crazy stuff! (Which was only like 6 months ago when I went right from 2 to 5 when I got it on a Steam sale). Glad I remembered and played this month for the first time.

- How useful was your UA?
- Did you use spying to your advantage?
- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Which Ideology did you choose?
- What techs did you prioritize ?

Click to expand...

Half the UA was good - saved some money on units, not too much though since it was an archipelago.

I used spying to align with city states. Now, realizing that science is the limiting factor, I would have used them for stealing techs.

Not sure if the map helped or hindered. It didn't allow a lot of expansion but it did allow cargo ships.

Difficulty of Prince lulled me into a false sense of security. It had me thinking it would be easy so I didn't concentrate on the things I should have. But it did allow me a win (I am playing immortal now but haven't beaten it yet).

I chose full Liberty because I always do. I figured on Prince I could churn out cities fast but the map hindered that. I ended up with 8 cities, 6 of which I built myself. Can't remember the exact order but I got a couple in Exploration and Patronage. Then Rationalism when it opened up. Then went Order ideology for the science with Factories tenet.

I didn't prioritize the correct techs or tech path because I didn't realize soon enough that was the key. I was slow with the techs. I didn't realize until too late that getting science up and getting certain techs was the key rather than getting city state allies. I had no problem getting city state allies and had most of them early in the game and still had a ton of cash.
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It was a fun game. It’s very different having a specific goal when playing. Another thing I noticed was how many mistakes I make. Normally I re-load if I make a bad blunder, or to play something a little differently. But not being able to re-load, I found myself many times going, "Doh! Why did I do that? I should've done Y and not X". I look forward to the next one.